Pinterest alternative
for designers.

A discovery tool doing a record’s job.

Pinterest is a discovery tool. It is exceptionally good at showing you something you were not looking for. What it is not, and was never designed to be, is a record of the things you intend to specify, buy and present.

If you are using it as both, the second job is the one that is failing. That is the whole comparison, really. Everything below is detail.

What actually goes wrong.

The link does not survive

A pin holds an image. The image’s source often resolves to a blog that reposted it, or to a shop that has since restructured its URLs. Weeks later you have a photograph of a chair and no route to a page with a price on it. One designer put it exactly: “Now, when I am ready to buy, I won’t remember WTF I saw.” A VADE save keeps the URL, the title, the price and the image together, because the URL is the record rather than a footnote to it.

Search stopped working the way you need

Pinterest’s search is optimised for discovering more of the same, not for finding the specific thing you saved. As one designer put it: “on Pinterest I found myself wanting to recategorize all the time, or not finding the right stuff when I needed it.” A private library has the opposite problem to solve, which is why VADE indexes the attribute you actually remember and lets you search by colour or hex code with results sorted closest-match first.

The feed is increasingly synthetic

This has become the loudest complaint of the last year. One designer put it bluntly: “I wanted to find some inspo picks for my kitchen renovation and went to the pinterest, but 99% of pictures were ai!” Inspiration you cannot buy is not sourcing. A library contains only what you put in it, which is a limitation when you want to be surprised and a feature when you want to be sure.

It is a wall of images, not a scheme

As one designer put it, “Pinterest is fine for collecting but isn’t really helpful for moodboards.” Another was blunter: “the problem is that Pinterest is a wall of images. You need to break free of the image wall.” A board is not a presentation, which is why the next step is usually an hour in Photoshop or InDesign that you did not budget for. VADE composes editorial moodboards from the products you have already saved, so the layout step stops being a separate job.

There is no supplier layer at all

Pinterest has no concept of a brand you hold a trade account with, a lead time you learnt the hard way, or a rep you email. For a professional that is most of the job. In VADE every save lands on a vendor card for that brand, with everything you have ever saved from them underneath it and your trade terms and contact kept alongside.

Side by side.

When Pinterest is still the right tool.

This section is not a rhetorical device. There are cases where swapping would be a mistake.

The honest position is that most designers should keep both, and stop asking Pinterest to be a specification record. Find on Pinterest. Keep in a library.

What VADE is not.

Worth saying plainly, because the category is full of things that do more. VADE is not a procurement suite. No purchase orders, no invoicing, no payments, no client billing, no project scheduling. If you need those, look at Programa, Studio Designer or Mydoma, and expect to pay four to six times as much for them. We have written the Programa comparison on exactly that basis.

VADE sits earlier in the process, at the point where you are finding and organising the things you might specify. Plenty of studios run it alongside a heavier system for exactly that reason, and the free tier exists so you can find out whether the method suits you before anyone signs anything.

Moving across without losing a fortnight.

Do not migrate your boards. Nobody finishes that job, and the attempt is why most people never switch.

Questions, answered.

Is VADE a Pinterest clone for designers?

No. Pinterest recommends things you have not seen yet. VADE keeps and organises things you have already found, with the supplier, the price and the link attached. They are different jobs, and most studios end up doing both.

Can I import my Pinterest boards?

There is no bulk import, and that is deliberate. Most pins have lost their source link, so an import would bring across a wall of images with no product behind them, which is exactly the problem you are trying to leave. Save what you are actively working with instead.

Does my client need an account to see a board?

No. A shared board is a link. They open it in a browser and it works, on a phone or a laptop, with no sign-up and nothing to install.

Can I hide trade prices and supplier names from a client view?

Yes, per share. Designers routinely choose to-the-trade suppliers so clients cannot shop the products directly, so hiding trade pricing on a given share was built in rather than bolted on afterwards.

Does it work with small independent suppliers?

Yes. VADE saves any URL rather than working from a closed catalogue, which is the main reason designers who specify boutique makers, mills and overseas workshops get on with it. If the product has a web page, it can be saved.

Will the colour search work on things I pinned years ago?

Only once they are in VADE. Colour extraction runs on the image of every product you save, so it applies to your VADE library rather than to your Pinterest boards. Move things across as you need them and the library builds itself around live projects.

Is VADE a procurement system?

No. There are no purchase orders, no invoicing, no payments and no project scheduling. VADE is a sourcing library and a presentation layer. If you need procurement, keep a heavier system and run VADE alongside it.

How much is it?

Free forever for saving, organising and colour search, with three moodboards a month. Solo is 12 pounds a month, Studio is 29 pounds a month for up to five seats. Cancel from billing settings in one click, without emailing anyone.